Thursday, September 24, 2009

Home Again Home Again Jiggity Jig

by Julie Coulter Bellon

Well, I just got home from the UVU Book Academy Conference and I am exhausted. A good exhausted. It was fun to see all my friends and make some new friends. I was running around all day moderating a panel, teaching two classes, and doing a book signing. But it was an amazing conference. We had over 300 registered attendees and we were full to capacity. Some classes were standing room only for sure. The only complaint I heard was that there were too many good classes to choose from, so that people had a hard time choosing. That’s a good thing in my opinion. We had some incredible presenters, including Stephanie Black (whose class was one of the most talked about), Lisa Mangum (who had to do two sessions of her class it was so popular), Anita Stansfield (who did a great job presenting), and James Dashner (who was so funny!) to name a few. Brandon Sanderson did a panel and a keynote and Stephen Covey made a surprise appearance at his daughter’s closing keynote and spoke a bit on his writing tips. It was truly a conference I won’t forget.

One of the best things about the conference, though, was going out to dinner afterward with 4 of the frog bloggers and James Dashner, Josi Kilpack, Nichole Giles from Authors Incognito and Teresa and Cory from the League of Utah Writers. I don’t think I’ve laughed that hard in a while and had fun just sitting and listening to all the writing talk going on around me. Have you ever had that happen when you are surrounded by writers who talk the same language as you in characters and ideas and what you’re writing and what’s going on with publishers, and how big an advance so and so got and how marketing is taking off and what editors put in your book that was so silly and well, you get my drift. It was the perfect end to a really great day.

So I’d just like to thank everyone who came to my classes and to everyone who made me laugh today. You are awesome and I hope to see you all again soon! That was fun.

One Cluttered Brain, I'm sorry, but the comment trail for that contest was a couple of weeks ago under my review of the book Saving Madeline. I think that contest has closed and the winner will be announced any day. I'll check with Ms. Nunes on that.

L.T. it was SO great to see you and I'm working on getting that particular class online so people can have it. Thank you! You're so sweet to me.